


Still I Think It's the Best Bet

by galacticproportions



Series: Reckonings [2]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Communication, Friendship, Gen, Guilt, M/M, Post-War, Recovery, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:07:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21997246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galacticproportions/pseuds/galacticproportions
Summary: Finn and Rey take the Millennium Falcon to see if any former stormtroopers want to be part of a new Jedi order, and reckon together with the events leading up to the end of the war.
Relationships: Finn & Rey (Star Wars), Poe Dameron/Finn, potential poe dameron/finn/rey
Series: Reckonings [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1583443
Comments: 14
Kudos: 125





	Still I Think It's the Best Bet

**Author's Note:**

> This is the sequel to "Falling From the Sky, Calling From the Graves," because there's always more to figure out.
> 
> Title is from "Forgiveness" by Patty Griffin. 
> 
> Spot the Ursula K. Le Guin reference and I'll write you a FinnPoe drabble!

“And Rey says hi,” Finn says into the transmitter, then looks sideways at her. “You do, right?”

“Right,” she says, resisting the urge to adjust the controls, since they're cruising, waiting for apogee, and there's nothing that needs adjusting. “Hi, Poe.”

The lag could just be the standard planetary interference. “Hey,” Poe's voice comes over the Falcon's ancient speakers. “Keep each other safe out there, okay?”

“Promise,” she says.

“Me too,” Finn says. “I promise too,” even though they all know the exact value of those kinds of promises. “We'll comm again when we're outward bound from the Demorians, okay?

“Affirmative.”

“You fucking nerd,” Finn says caressingly. Rey almost feels like she should look away. “Leave us a note in the dead drop if you have to go do something nuts.”

“Will do. See you.” The line cuts out.

Finn looks back over; there's just a little slice of the planet's curve in the viewport now, faintly silvering his face. “Are you guys having a hard time again? Still? Again?”

“I thought we cleared the air, sort of. But sometimes it seems like he's still mad at me.” She punches the coordinates for the first jump. A little hiccup as the old ship heaves, and in the viewport, space turns to light.

“What did you talk about?”

“Secrets. Not keeping them, I mean. And—Ben.” It was so much easier to say his name when he was alive. “What I expected because of that. And mistakes I made. Because of it.”

“So you did talk about how you sort of teamed up with the person who tortured him.”

“I _had_ to,” she snaps, and Finn just looks at her.

As Finn continues to practice, their closeness in the Force has grown. He isn't much for lifting rocks and he loses every sparring match, but his ability to feel and listen is already outpacing hers. She knows he knows she isn't really sorry, so she doesn't bother saying it until she is, when they've switched back to impulse power for the approach to Space Station DM-09. The great phallic spindle hangs between two of Demoria's micromoons, and deserters from the garrisons in that sector have been convening there.

“Thanks,” he says, instead of _It's okay_ or any of the other things that would let her let it go. “That blue light over the landing bay means they're on a dark cycle right now. Let's sleep onboard and go down in ship's morning. Want a dinnerbox?”

They eat at the dejarik table, wincing at the deadened taste of the preserved vegetables. “I would have killed for this back on Jakku,” Rey says, exaggerating only slightly, and then when Finn doesn't respond, “Are _you_ mad at me?”

It takes him a while to answer. Plenty of time for her own shame and anger to swell and swamp her perception of whatever it is he might be feeling, and then to subside. “I don't know exactly,” he says finally. “I was before. Scared for you, too.” He takes the eating sticks out of her hand and lays them on the table, closes his fingers around hers. “I think the difference is, Poe doesn't understand how you could do what you did. Not the part on Exegol, I mean, but before that.”

All the parts before that: all the days and all the nights of turning around to find him there, a tower of menace and certainty and longing. All the motions toward him, away from anything and anyone else. “And you do?” Poe's words, a small part of her realizes, from their fight on the hillside.

“I think I get it more than he does.” Finn turns her hand in his, traces around her bitten thumbnail. “We used to want commendation from the officers,” he says, voice slowing, thinking into it. “We knew they didn't give a shit what happened to us, but it would still feel good, you know? Even from the ones who actively treated us badly the rest of the time. If I'm like, 'Man, there used to be a time when I cared if Phasma told me I did something right,' it sounds fake, but I did, we all did. Even though we knew—” He shrugs, the motion traveling into her: his shoulder, his hand, her hand, her shoulder and neck and chest, the core of her. “That's the closest I can think of. Was it like that?”

“Maybe a little. Not exactly, though, because I _gave_ him power over me.” She can't look at him. “I just handed it to him. Over and over and over.” The hardest part is that she can't tell, genuinely can't tell now, if that was bad or not. Not bad as in evil, but bad as in a bad idea. Bad as in wrong. It won the war for them, didn't it?

“We did too,” Finn breaks in on her spinning thoughts. “Well, sort of, sort of not. But nobody likes feeling helpless. It feels better if everything that happened to you was your fault somehow.” Finn stops himself. “I don't mean better. It feels worse, but also better? Maybe I don't really get it either.”

“You pushed Phasma into a garbage chute,” Rey says. “Right? And then the next time you saw her, you pushed her into the fiery wreckage of a destroyed ship. Where she died.”

He's grinning: she's not looking at him but she can hear the grin when he says, “That's true, I definitely did do both those things.”

“Okay, well, I didn't do anything like that.” She _sees_ the wound in Kylo's gut—Ben's gut—opening before her like a hyperlane, a pathway cleared—and then closing as she let the Force flow through her, into him, teaching the wound to heal itself, tightening the link between them. “I sort of did the _opposite_ of that. I kept him going.” The dejarik table flickers on and off again, on and off again; the remains of their dinnerboxes start to tremble. “I had to,” she repeats, and then, “I thought I had to.”

“Uh,” Finn says. “Rey.”

“What if I didn't,” she whispers. “What if I didn't have to.”

It's in the Force rather than with her body that she feels Finn embracing her: present, wordless, timeless, here with her. Everything slows and hushes and stills, and the dinnerboxes settle back where they were before.

In ship's morning, by unspoken consent, they meditate together before hailing the station. They come bearing rations, since the deserters have been living off the station's stores and hydroponics, and also bearing a set of invitations. There's the settlement on Endor's grassland moon, where Jannah and her battalion have made their home. There are restoration teams on a few reclaimed worlds, and Rey knows that Lando's already put in a word for the research team on Bespin, to help troopers find where they were taken from. And there's the new Jedi temple, which currently only exists in Rey's mind.

“I want us to learn from the mistakes of the past,” she tells the crowd of about forty wary people, wearing various combinations of underblacks and armor and smelling faintly like they've been rationing soap. A few have lasered designs into their hair, otherwise mainly kept at a stormtrooper's regulation quarter-inch. “From my teachers' mistakes, and their teachers' mistakes. I want to practice living in and with the Force, not controlling it or using it to control others.”

That brings a flinch or two, and she figures she knows why. It's a mixed crowd, she can feel that, Awakened and not. Finn mentioned that he'd been seeing more of that lately. “What for?” someone calls out.

Finn steps forward a little, at her side. “One thing is, it's a lot easier to live with if you're living with it on purpose,” he says. “I'm Finn, I was FN-2187, and I had no idea what was happening to me. How many of you heard voices in your heads and you didn't know why?” A few fingers flicker in the trooper handsign for affirmation. “How many of you trusted the people who heard the voices even if you didn't?” A few more handsigns here and there. “How many of you thought you'd go along with the squad and get out while the getting was good?” A couple of wry or grudging smiles, some a little warmer between people standing close together. _He's so good at this,_ Rey thinks. _When did he get good at this?_ “And how many of you were glad for a chance to do what you knew was the right thing?” A shy, pleased rumble: whether or not they felt like that then, they're eager to claim it now, want to live up to it.

“What would we do at this temple of yours?” a young trooper toward the front wants to know. Their eyes are hard, their skin the color of the leather grip on Rey's old staff. They, or someone, has shaved a Naboo lily above their ear.

“Meditate,” Rey says. “Spar. Learn history. Work together. Wash dishes.” She wanted a laugh for that, but doesn't get one. “You know, chores and things. But everyone would do them. No one would be a servant, it'd be your temple too.”

“Thought Jedi had masters,” the young one in front says. “Don't they call you Master Skywalker?”

“You can be a Skywalker _today,_ ” Rey says dryly, around the sudden lump in her throat. “I'll burn you the identichip myself. And I'm a long way from being anyone's master. We'll learn together.”

“Too late,” another trooper calls, this one older than most of the others: a survivor, with two missing side teeth and a few flecks of gray in their close-cut hair. “General Calrissian already said we can all be Calrissians.” Laughter breaks out, patchy, like artillery fire, and the room eases a little. Every resident of Cloud City is entitled to Lando's surname, Rey knows, an ordinance he passed after the last war. “You ever decide you need another family,” he told her just before she left for Tatooine, “you know where to come.”

There are more questions, still challenging but with a little more curiosity mixed in, and some talk about logistics. With a glance and a nod between them, she and Finn move in among the crowd. Rey's telling an ex-trooper with a hand tremor what she knows about Jannah and Rose's work with battle-shaken veterans and the grassland riding beasts, when there's a sudden surge of violence in the Force, just before a hoarse hiss of, “Traitor!” splits her ears.

Time slows; she parts the crowd like water, jaw set and saber ignited. By the time she reaches Finn, three troopers are sitting on a fourth, who's trying to heave them off and spitting curses. Finn has his blaster out, but yet another trooper gently pushes his hand back to his side. “Don't shoot him,” they say—not pleading or barking, just speaking. Just a recommendation, a suggestion.

“It's been harder for some of us,” the older deserter says, coming up to them. “Conditioning. Habit.”

Finn nods. “Your mind snaps back.”

“Does yours?” the young and truculent trooper asks, and it sounds like they really want to know.

“It does,” Finn says. “But not as much anymore. I've had a lot of help.” He touches Rey's saber arm, a gesture of unity and a reminder, and she draws the beam down to nothing. “What'll you do with him? What do you usually do?”

To Rey's astonishment, there follows a lively discussion about different schools of thought on community enforcement and self-governance, all of which takes place while three peoples' buttocks are still squashing the accuser into the station deck. He's stopped struggling; he seems to have resigned himself to his fate, at least for the time being.

No one is ready to leave Station DM-09 today, but there's an eventual consensus that a couple extra transports and a shipment of fuel would be very welcome if the Resistance, or what used to be the Resistance, can spare them for when that day comes. All the station has is the transport the first division deserted in, and a few single- and dual-occupancy craft as people took flight on their own. They've designated two contacts: the older ex-trooper, who goes by Takver after someone she saw in a contraband holonovela once, and another who uses their squadname, Spins. Looking back over her shoulder as they return to the landing bay, Rey sees a few people helping the red-faced assailant to his feet.

“Maybe you should just have sat on me,” Rey says unhappily when they're underway again. “Maybe that would've done it.” She vacated the pilot's seat this time to let Finn and Poe check in privately, and she doesn't know what they said to each other before Finn called her in to set the jump for the rendezvous. Now they're side by side, pilot and nominal copilot, near-Jedi and sort-of-padawan, friend and friend, watching space-time stream by.

“You would've knocked us into the next system.” He says it with affection.

“Also we might not have won.” This is what she clings to, this is how she silences her fears. And because she can _feel_ Finn holding back, deciding what to say, she starts to be afraid again.

“I don't know if you can think about it like that,” he says. “Can you?”

“I _died,_ ” she says, “He saved me. And I couldn't have won that fight without him. If I hadn't saved him—if I hadn't trusted him—”

“Rey, c'mon. You don't think I'm glad you're here? You don't think I'm glad we won? Look at me, c'mon. Do you think I'm not glad?” She doesn't need to look at him; it's very clear that he isn't not glad.

She doesn't want to look at him.

“You want me to say you did the right thing, right? That it was all okay because it came out okay. For us. But that wouldn't be the thing that would make it okay. If it hadn't worked, that wouldn't have been the thing that made it wrong. If it was wrong. I don't know how else to say it, I don't know what that means about how you should feel, or anything like that.”

At the moment she doesn't seem to be feeling anything. She's distant, lost; even the flow of the Force feels muffled, far away. She knows Finn's hand is in hers, but doesn't feel it. And then she begins to again, slowly, both his Force presence and the warmth of his skin. She says, “I don't know what to do about any of it.”

“I don't either.”

“I'm glad you're here too.”

“I'm glad I'm here too, too.” They breathe together for a minute or a year. “Your hand is like ice and it's not getting any warmer,” he says finally. “Can I get you a blanket? I think I should get you a blanket.”

The sounds of extended rummaging reach her before Finn returns with a blanket, which he tucks around her, and two soup packs. He pops the spouts for them, setting free twin wisps of steam. Rey sucks on the too-salty soup and does start to feel a little warmer. “Can we talk about something else?”

“Sure.”

“Why were _you_ and Poe fighting? Before.”

“I was being stupid. I thought I couldn't protect him _and_ protect you, and I sort of thought out of the two of you he could take care of himself—”

“Based on _what?_ ”

“Based on the fact that he tries to protect everybody else,” Finn says. “Why do you think he joined the Resistance? Does he always do it the most optimal way? No. Does it always work? Also no. But he does try, and sometimes it works _amazingly_ well. So it fooled me, you know? Way longer than it should've. In my defense, it's also hard to figure this stuff out when there are people shooting at you all the time. And stabbing you. And giant snake things.”

“They're not shooting at us now.”

“Knock on metal,” Finn says, and taps his own temple with the knuckles of his free hand. “So we should probably try to figure out at least some of it before the shooting starts again.”

“You think it's going to?” They both know it's still a shooting war, especially in the parts of the Outer Rim where the First Order was firmly entrenched. Plenty of Resistance personnel, from veterans to new recruits, have joined that fighting with hardly a pause; plenty of First Order officers have seen Hux's treachery, Ren's defection and Pryde's death as opportunities (a wound, she thinks shuddering, a path). Plenty of stormtroopers haven't deserted at all. That isn't what Rey means. She means: are the odds going to shift again. She means: is the peaceful, balance-keeping Jedi order she talked about with the troopers on DM-09 a load of bantha shit.

Finn's sigh, before he answers, is windy and long. “I mean,” he says. “I used to want to tell you it's fine, we can be done, it doesn't have to be our fight. But I'd have to lie so much.”

Rey loves him more than anyone she has ever met or ever expects to meet. “I don't want you to lie,” she says. “For one thing, you're really terrible at it.”

He laughs, his real laugh. “I am, huh,” he says. “Why did you believe me?”

“Because I didn't know anything!” And then, more quietly, “I heard what I wanted to hear. I guess.”

“I became that, though,” Finn says. “I became what I told you I was. What you believed. It just took a little while.”

Rey knows it's as far as he'll go, and she doesn't push it. They sit in silence again until he says, “I keep thinking, now that the demob's done and there's no central command, Poe's probably gonna fly out to one of the fronts before long.”

She recognizes the likelihood of this, and she's not even mad at him for bringing Poe back into it. But: “What about you?”

“Me? I'm good. I know what I'm doing.” He does, too: she saw it in action, back on the station.” I mean, I don't always know _how_ to do it, but I know what I'm going for and what I need to learn, and I'm learning it. Only thing that sucks is being away from Poe and you so much. Well, that and the troopers who still think I'm a traitor and want to kill me. But that's just two things.”

“You sounded like Poe yourself just now, a little.”

“He's rubbing off on me, I guess. Shut up,” he adds, as Rey giggles. “Before you say one more word, think about whether you _really_ wanna hear about this. Because I will tell you.”

She swallows hard and turns to face him, hold his eyes. “You will?”

Finn's lips part a little, soundless. The quiet hangs between them, changed and waiting. “If you want,” he says. “Do you?”

By the time she says, “I'm not sure yet,” she knows that he already knows that, can feel it through the bond that every truth makes stronger. “Probably also you should ask him first. You know. While I'm deciding.”

“You're right,” Finn says. “Good thought. I will.”

A monitor dings on the Falcon's control panel; it's almost time for them to drop out of lightspeed. Rey feels like she's been fighting, or running, or falling. She wriggles partway out of the blanket to get a hand on the controls. “Here we are,” she says.


End file.
